Love Ed Week & The PBS NewsHour. Their Episode On Teachers Pay Teachers – Not So Much

The PBS NewsHour and Ed Week regularly produce great segments on education and regularly share them here. However, I watched their piece tonight on Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT), and was less than impressed.

Listen, I understand that they only have a few minutes to cover a story, but this is not the first time a media piece on Teachers Pay Teachers, in my humble opinion, missed several key issues (some of my critiques are similar to the ones I voiced when The New York Times published a profile on the business – see Disappointing NY Times Article On Teachers & “A Sharing Economy”.

Instead of highlighting one particularly bad lesson plan that is on TPT, I wish they highlighted the fact that so many schools don’t provide high-quality materials, lessons or professional development to their teachers (that could assist them to develop better judgment). And, as an aside, I’ve certainly see a lot of terrible school district-approved lesson materials.

If they were going to portray a problem with TPT, I wish they had mentioned the rampant sale by some on the platform of materials illegally taken from resources under copyright: